Back on June 30th I wrote a seemingly bearish post on how Chesapeake Energy (CHK: chart) was making a public offering to not only pay for a Barnett Shale acquisition, but also to pay off debt.  While I can tolerate issuing shares for asset acquisitions, the fact that they were using the offering to pay off debt really turned me off to the company.

Last Friday, Chesapeake held their conference call (conference call MP3) for the second quarter results and issued financial results for that quarter through a press release.

After listening to the conference call, it appears that the acquisitions for the company are over and they are shifting to manufacturing gas on those recent acquisitions.

Some highlights from the conference call and Q2 results:

Net income of $0.82 per fully diluted share
Increase in EPS of 64% year over year
Production up for 20th consecutive quarter
Chesapeake expects organic growth of 10% in 2007

If you’re sitting at your computer all day, isolated from the financial world and shunned from your television, I have good news.

Bloomberg.com has a free live streaming TV feed on their website.  Not only can you receive the U.S. feed, but also Bloomberg feeds from all over the world in various languages.

The interface is easy to use, and there are no third party downloads needed, as the feed runs right off the Microsoft Media Player and is embedded in a browser page. 

From video page, you can also see a schedule, …

On Exxon
Last night Exxon Mobile (XOM: chart) released their second quarter earnings and it’s to no ones surprise that they did rather well. Or did they?

Exxon reported that through the second quarter their profits rose by 36%, leaving them with a net income of $10.36 Billion. 

To a guy like me, that’s a pretty big number.

An even bigger number:  $88.67 Billion, which is their net expenses during that same period.

So by my calculation, this leaves Exxon’s profit margin right at 10%.

If you own a McDonalds franchise, you’d squawk at a 10% profit margin, as you’re …

If you want to sell your house, you’ve got two options: Get a realtor to do your legwork, or leg it out yourself and sell it “by owner”.

One of the advantages to using a realtor is that your home gets listed in the MLS database, the widely accepted one stop shop for home listings.  The disadvantage? You’re going to cut 6% off the top of your homes contract price.

The disadvantage of selling your home by owner? You can forget about a MLS listing.

BUT! This could change as lawmakers in Maine are trying to create an independent database …

There’s an awful lot to wrap your brain around when it comes to understanding oil and gas production, not to mention trying to comprehend how the commodity is traded.  So I thought I’d offer a little primer to those interested.

Measurement
Crude oil (wiki) is measured in barrels.  There are 42 gallons to a barrel (as it was stored in 42 gallon wooden barrels in the 19th century), and in the field, all quantities, with a few exceptions, are be referred to in terms of barrels.  For instance, a frac job could take as many as 10,000 barrels to complete, depending on the type of frac job and the depth of the well.

Natural gas (wiki) is measured in two ways, by volume (thousand cubic feet, MCF) and by heat content (Btu). One Btu is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit.  Not all gas contains the same heat content, and hence the same amount of energy, giving reason as to why it is also measured in Btu’s.

For instance, 10 burning kitchen matches release 10 Btu’s.

For all practical purposes, pipeline companies measure natural gas in terms of volume.

You can’t beat a good dividend, especially in a retirement account. Tack on a consistent dividend that pays out monthly, and you’ve got a solid foundation for a happy retirement.

I’ve been watching Pengrowth Energy Trust (PGH: chart) for quite a while, and have held trust units in various retirement accounts up until recently, when the company announced that they would merge the two share classes together.  Class A shares would be merged into Class B shares and the whole pot would be renamed “Trust Units” on July 27th.

This was all fine, except for the fact that the two classes of shares didn’t trade at an equivalent share price, therefore something’s gotta give, and I didn’t want to stick around and see who’s portfolio was going to pay for the wash.  I took my gains and went to cash.

Well, my timing was impeccable, as the price per share has dropped to just over $22, down from nearly $25 per share. Obviously a result of the consolidation of two share structures that don’t trade at the same value.

Supply and demand is fairly straight forward.  When supply out paces demand, the price falls.  When demand creeps ahead of supply, the price increases to curtail demand.

It’s all very easy to understand, and it doesn’t take an economist to explain the principles and create models based on a given commodity and a set known values for supply and demand.

Take away the known values and the simple supply and demand problem becomes purely theoretical.  Enter stage left: Peak Oil.

Peak oil, also known as Hubbert’s peak, is based on the principle that at some point in time, the world production of oil will start to decline.

Note that …

There are a couple of stocks today that are looking a bit oversold, mostly in the oil services sector.

Halliburton (HAL: chart) is flirting with $30 per share after a split nearly a week ago and is quite attractive from looking at the chart. 

Schlumberger (SLB: chart) isn’t quite as attractive as Halliburton, but it’s also showing signs of being oversold by the street.

Weatherford International (WFT: chart) and Baker Hughes (BHI: chart) also fit the mold of being oversold, and both look like a good short term trade.

Oil prices ($wtic: …

Reading “Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst” will leave you wondering how you can ever make a penny in the stock market.

Dan Reingold delivers a first hand account from the shoes of a telecom analyst on The Street and in the process reveals the secrets from the other side of the wall that give business and banking firms a hand up in the stock market.

An experience based in the WorldCom era, the amount of greed and corruption that prevails behind closed doors will knock your socks off, and quite frankly anger you if you’ve got …

I learned last night that the average American drinks the equivalent of 555 cans of soda in a year.  This equates to 1 gallon of soda per week.

In related news:

“It has been estimated that the estimated cost of overweight and obesity in the U.S. is $122.9 billion. This estimate accounts for $64.1 billion in direct costs and $58.8 billion in indirect costs related to the obesity epidemic, a sum that is comparable to the economic costs of cigarette smoking.” 

  -Source: ObesityinAmerica.com/EconomicImpact